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I’m a writer. I spend most of my day sitting in front of a computer,
with an open text editing program, and I write things that
hopefully–after a bit of editorial work–will be useful, enlightening,
and/or entertaining as appropriate. I’ve been doing this since I was a
teenager and frankly it never seemed to be particularly notable a skill.
The fact that I came of age with the Internet a member of its native
participant-driven textual culture had a profound effect, without
question. This is a difficult lineage to manage and integrate.

Obviously I’m conflicted: on the one hand I think that the Internet has
been great for allowing people like me to figure out how to write. I am
forever thankful for the opportunities and conversations that the
Internet has provided for me as a writer. At the same time, the
Internet, and particularly the emergence of “Social Media” as a
phenomena complicates what I do and how my work is valued.

Let’s be totally clear. I’m not exactly saying “Dear Internet, Leave
content generation to the professionals,” but rather something closer to
“Dear Internet, Let’s not distribute the responsibility of content
generation too thinly, and have it come back to bite us in the ass.” Let
me elaborate these fears and concerns a bit:

I’m afraid that as it becomes easier and easier to generate content,
more will start creating things, and there will be more and more text
and that will lead to all sorts of market-related problems, as in a
vicious cycle. If we get too used to crowd sourcing content, it’s not
clear to me that the idea of “paying writers for their efforts,” will
endure. Furthermore, I worry that as the amount of content grows, it
will be harder for new content to get exposure and the general
audience will become so fragmented that it will be increasingly
difficult to generate income from such niche groups.

Some of these fears are probably realistic: figuring out how we will
need to work in order to our jobs in an uncertain future is always
difficult. Some are not: writing has never been a particularly
profitable or economically viable project, and capturing audience is
arguably easier in the networked era.

The answer to these questions is universally: we’ll have to wait and
see, and in the mean time, experimenting with different and possibly
better ways of working. My apologies for this rip-off, but it’s better
to live and work as if we’re living in the early days of an exciting new
era, rather than the dying days of a faltering regime.

Perhaps the more interesting implication of this doesn’t stem from
asking “how will today’s (and yesterday’s) writers survive in the
forthcoming age,” but rather “how do these changes affect writing
itself.” If I don’t have an answer to the economic question, I
definitely don’t have an answer to the literary question. I’m hoping
some of you do.

As an interesting peak behind the curtain, this post was mostly inspired
as a reaction to this piece of popular
criticism
that drove me batty. It’s not a bad piece and I think my objections are
largely style and form related rather than political. Perhaps I’m
responding to the tropes of fan writing, and in retrospect my critique
of this piece isn’t particularly relevant here. But that article might
provide good fodder for discussion. I look forward to your thoughts in
comments or on a wiki
page.